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Meet Our Students

Ahmed Al Hinai

Major: Civil Engineering (College of Science and Engineering)Class of 2017

"As an international student, I believe that knowing and understanding new languages is a key competent in bridging relationships between communities and cultures. Coming from Oman, I have seen how important Urdu is in our community. It’s exciting seeing students with different backgrounds interact in a new language."

Rahema Rashid

PSEO studentClass of 2020

"My name is Rahema Rashid, and I am a second year PSEO student, hoping to major in biomedical engineering. I chose to study Urdu because it is my mother tongue and is spoken by the majority of my family members in Pakistan. Being raised in the US my whole life, however, I spoke mostly in English at home and had limited speaking and comprehension skills and weak writing skills in the Urdu language. This made communicating with my Urdu-speaking relatives difficult. But after just half a semester in my first Urdu class, I am able to read and write in Urdu, along with being able to speak with a better understanding of grammar and syntax. My family is impressed with my improvement."

Ella Rasp

Major: Urban StudiesClass of 2019

"I was really excited to start Hindi this year because I wanted to become more familiar with the language and culture of an area I would really like to study and/or work in in the future. There are lots of scholarships to study Hindi abroad, too, which is a great incentive! Not to mention watching Bollywood movies would even kind of be like studying! I have enjoyed getting to know my classmates, many of whom have been in both of the semesters of Hindi I've taken so we've all gotten to know each other really well. It's not as hard as I thought to learn how to write, which feels a little bit like a magic power now that we've been using it all year."

Abigail Rauls

Major: Global StudiesClass of 2017

"There are lots of opportunities in class to ask questions and interact with other students in Hindi, more than in any other language class I’ve taken. I chose to study Hindi because it is a beautiful language spoken by one of the largest populations in the world, but my interest in the language and Indian culture has exponentially grown since starting HnUr 1011 last semester."

Emily Sontag

Major: PsychologyClass of 2018

"My interest in other cultures and languages stems from early childhood when I realized how much passion I had for learning about the world around me and the people who inhabit it. When I saw that Hindi was offered at UMN during my orientation, I decided to register the next day. What attracted me to this minor was that I knew nothing about the language and wanted to learn."